"The Lord works from the inside out. The world works from the outside in. The world would take people out of the slums. Christ would take the slums out of people, and then they would take themselves out of the slums. The world would mold men by changing their environment. Christ changes men, who then change their environment. The world would shape human behavior, but Christ can change human nature...Yes, Christ changes men, and changed men can change the world."
Ezra Taft Benson

Oct 22, 2012

Justified

Wanna hear something ironic? :)

Soooo for two of my classes I had to read these really life-changing books.

If I had to sum them up in one statement it would be that we need to realize that we can only control ourselves and we all seem to share a basic problem: we don't realize that we are the problem.

These books have shifted how I approach different situations and recognize how I'm seeing people. But guess what! As I was reading this book, I had a couple people come to mind. "They could really use this book," I thought.

Do you get the irony?? Yes, I realized changes that I need to make. But as I learned about ways we justify our own actions by how we see other people, I was judging other people!

Psh. Us humans are crazy, eh? :)

These are the books, same authors:Leadership and Self-Deception

and

The Anatomy of Peace

(You can tell I think reading these books would be awesome for everybody.)

Reading the whole books would explain these concepts a lot better, but basically,

When you have a "heart at peace" by seeing people as people (instead of obstacles to personal whims or ambitions) your whole world can change.

You stop needing to justify your own actions/ideas by mentally villianizing or degrading other people.

Ok yeah. I'm just gonna stop there. I'm not explaining it very well. You should just read the books, k? :)

Now indulge me in sharing a simple but thought-provoking experience of mine. Today I saw a professor on campus, bustling through the crowd of students, probably on his way to teach his next lecture.

I stopped him. You see, his wife had been one of my patients this last weekend. I asked how she was doing. He recognized me and said she'd had a rough weekend and really just wanted to be home.

Then we both wished each other the best, and headed off into our lives.

Reflecting on these two books I'd just read, I wondered if seeing each other in this context had changed our opinions of the other.

That day (well...night I guess...working graveyards messes me up a little ha) had been a busy one. I can understand his frustration with some of the delayed service they got, as I hurried around the floor.

Did seeing each other in this different world humanize the other?

He wasn't just an impatient family member, who didn't seem to have much tolerance for how busy I was triage-ing my time between patients.

I wasn't just another worker.

He was a professor, a concerned husband.

I was a busy, but concerned aid to his wife, and a college student.

A good gauge for if we are seeing people as people or objects is how interested we are in seeing who they are. What do they like? What do they do? What is their name??